Monday, March 17, 2014

The Veteran's Bonus is Fine as it Is

There have been a lot of complaints about the Veteran's Bonus in the last week since character boosts went live. For those unaware, the Veteran's Bonus raises your professions to 600 (max level) if you use a boost on a character levels 60-89. When this feature was announced I was cautiously excited about it, from the perspective of someone who plays the auction house. I'm really happy with the current state of it, but quite a few are not.

The big question I had when we first heard about the Veteran's Bonus was in regard to recipes. What would these new crafters know how to make? Everything? Some things? Nothing? Turns out, nothing. You have 600 skill level, but no recipes. And that is where the complaints are coming from. People on Twitter and forums have been raging about this, and they are flat-out wrong. Just about every angry post I found, the person expected to get EVERY recipe up through 600. Many pointed out that the cost of EVERY recipe vastly exceeds the 150g your boosted character receives. Are you fucking kidding me? Do you even know what I had to do to learn all those patterns? While I'm as surprised as anyone that the VB doesn't give you any recipes at all, I am relieved that people aren't getting stuff that requires discovery or rep grinding. Stuff we just buy from a trainer? I'm ok with that. But I would be just as pissed as the guys that want it all for free if people had so easily gotten the patterns I had to work hard for. Some of my stuff required raiding. Some stuff (enchants) cost me hours of my life doing daily quests. Many of my good and profitable JC cuts were borne from an agonizing combination of random discovery and world drops. Meta cuts in particular took me a long time to get, and I'm frankly happy that my new competitors don't just have them because they are cool giving Blizzard $60. And why do these people want every recipe anyway?

If you're a completionist and you HAVE to have every purchasable pattern for your new professions, it's only going to cost you a few thousand gold. Really not much considering you're buying the potential to make hundreds of thousands back with a little discipline. The complainers posit that they are starting out on a new realm and only have the 150g the boost brings to work with. I suspect a lot of these complaints are false rationalizations for wanting patterns for nothing (you leveled to 60 and didn't make any gold?) but let's take them at their word. To start out, you only need to learn one or two current recipes for each of your professions to get going on your new realm. I'm going to give you a few examples from the professions I do.

Boosted an alchemist? Well, the stuff you want to learn is discovered. You can't buy it even if you have the gold. You can buy Master Healing Potion for only 20g, and each one you make gives you a chance to learn profitable transmutes. The mats for the potions are cheap. I think I discovered all the good stuff in about an hour. Let's talk leatherworking. You can get started for 5g. That will allow you to make Magnificent Hide, which sell consistently. You'll want to use them to make armor kits, but to do that you'll need to grind out some Golden Lotus rep like the rest of us had to. But you can start making profit for only 5g. Hard to complain about that. Jewelcrafters can get started even cheaper than that! The MoP cuts that sell are all discovered or dropped. You can learn the recipe to start discovering cuts for only 4.5g. It's going to take you a while to learn all the patterns that way, but the rest of us did it and we survived. You're on your own for the meta cuts. It took me months to get the ones that sell. But really guys, a 4.5g and reasonable time investment for a profession that makes quite a few WoW millionaires? Stop your bitching. Just to hammer my point home, you can get started in enchanting for 2.28g. Buy the pattern for Glorious Stats. They sell all day every day, and mats on quite a few servers are stupid cheap. I mean 80s for dust cheap. You can start cranking out enchants for the cost of a potion.

I don't know why people want a bunch of old recipes that don't really sell, but they do. OK fine, well you are going to have to go out and get them like the rest of us did. Farm some mobs and grind some rep. Solo super-old content for weeks while you wait for patterns to drop. Do totally repetitive daily quests. You're my competition now, so don't expect any sympathy. And I have clearly proven that you can get started making gold with your new professions for well under the 150g the boost gives you. So stop complaining. Asking for every recipe to be included with the Veteran's Bonus is lunacy.

It is for sure. I'm going to use it on my gnome monk for easy leveling of engineering. The leveling is why I've avoided that profession for so long. And as long as I skip Outlands and Northrend with my boost I'm happy.